Weber + Durkheim + DuBois

What type of epsitomology does Max Weber follow?

Thoughts on values and reserach?

What level does his reserach focus on?

An interpretivist

Pioneers the idea of value free sociology, and is on the more conservative side

The reserach is centred on mid level theory and is wary of big theory

Does Weber use the power view or the embedded view?

He used both

Power view: investigated forms and bases of power

Embedded view: looks at how politics influenced other social structures and vice versa

What is the basis of Weber's key analytical concepts?

Ideal types: Abstract typologies that are not meant to conform to reality, they are instaed used to compare units to highlight reasons for similarities and differences

Stratification?

3 types?

Stratification: Hierarchical ranking or layering of social relation

1. Class: Strat based on possessing resources

2. Party: Strat based on power

3. Status: Strat based on culture/ideas

How did Weber define power?

Social power?

the capability to do something despite resistance from others

Social power is relational, which means that power is exerted over others in our interactions

Skipped poggi slides (up to slide 28) see if anything doesn't allign w/ reading notes

What is legitimacy (in terms of ruling)?

What concept does this give rise to?

Legitimacy: Found that people follow orders when they believe rulers have a legitimate right to rule

Gives rise to the concept of legitimate authority

Weber's 3 types of authority?

1. Charismatic Authority: Charisma, unique powers of individual are the basis for their domination of others

2. Traditional Authority: tradition is used to justify the rule of some over others

3. Legal-Rational Authority: rules justify domination

How does Weber define bureaucracy?

5 components?

(It is an ideal type). It is an organization in which rules are the basis of action. They rationally organise to coordinate all actors

1. Positions with formal duties based on rules

2. Meritocracy

3. Hierarchical chain of command

4. Salary-based compensation

5. Record keeping

What sort of interests are people to pursue under bureaucracy?

What does it promote to do this?

People should coordinate to pursue organizational interests over personal interests

Promotes coordination and control

2 darker components of bureaucracy?

1. Dehumanization: makes us simply follow rules, don't think for ourselves, are controlled by the bureaucratic machine

2. Iron Cage: bureaucracies control everything, we're unable to act freely, always constrained by bureaucratic red tape

Durkheim: Societal Determinism?

What is the purpose of sociology?

Society precedes individual,

shapes us in ways that allow the perpetuation of society

Purpose of sociology is to analyse society through social facts (signs of society's influence)

What is Durkheim's theory?

What sort of a view did he take?

His key theory is structural functionalism: analyzed societies as a whole, looked at the functions social relations fulfill for the society to survive

Took a consensus view, where he focused on what held societies together rather than what tore them apart

Durkheim: What is Moral Density?

What is it affected by?

What concept comes out of this?

Moral Density: Shared norms, values, outlooks, identity

It is affected by social density or the set of social relations present

Concept: collective consciousness - wherein rituals heighten a shared awareness of social unity

The main danger of emphasizing consensus in a society?

The main danger is that when we overemphasize unity, we may villanise difference and excuse exclusion and destruction

ex: lynching

What are the two areas of political sociology Durkheim influences?

1. Identity politics:

The idea that there are two levels of the mind (the individual and collective level)

Moral density shapes the collective level, and rituals and symbols play important roles switching from the default (individual) to the collective level

2. Civil society: Focuses on norms of civility and active associational participation

Relevance of identity politics and civil society to politics?

1. Politics is about the collective level of the mind. There are questions like who is part of the collective and who is not

2. Focuses on norms of civility and active associational participation

a. Normative view: shared values and norms of civility

b. Active association participation

What is the way that Tocqueville's philosophy differs from Durkheim?

Focuses more on power and the associational view

DuBois: language?

lobbied for appropriate terms to be used to refer to black people

DuBois: The Negro problem?

2 causes?

Social Problem: the failure of an organized social group to realize its group ideals, through the inability to adapt a certain desired line of action to given conditions of life

Causes:

1. Racism: prevented Black Americans from advancing - a direct result of slavery

2. Cultural backwardness: economic disadvantage, ignorance, and deficiency with regard to organised social life - also a legacy of slavery

DuBois: Double consciousness?

Double-Consciousness: Outcome of the subjectively lived and felt experience of the Negro problem

impedes a unified consciousness, causes mental trauma

Black American always trapped between two worlds, never comfortable in either

Forced to value whiteness and devalue blackness, but they can never be white

DuBois: Race and biological vs. construct views?

At his time, race was viewed as a biological characteristic

DuBois was one of the first to oppose this. Instead he argued race was a social construct

While genetic differences cause differing phenotypic traits, people chose which characteristics were relevant (chose biological markers)

DuBois: relationship to pweor?

He was a critical sociologist, but saw power as highly racialised

Spoke often of white supremacy and argued that you couldn't understand American society/colonised regions without considering white supremacy

How did DuBois use Marxism?

DuBois argued that we must add the dimension of race into our considerations of the economy

Also argued that we needed to have global considerations (pre-dated the world systems theory)